This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Hardly a day goes by that someone from Delta Air Lines doesn't place a telephone call, sometimes two, to Lisa Hansen's South Salt Lake wholesale florist business.
Hansen says the message is always the same: "They're here!"
They are flowers, fresh-cut, chilled and flown in boxes to Salt Lake City from the four corners of the world - carnations from Colombia; roses from Ecuador; tulips from Holland; larkspur, lilies and hydrangea from California.
"I've always felt that the guys out at Delta are the most important part of my business. They get the flowers here. If I don't have them, I can't sell them," said Hansen, who receives as many as 70 boxes a day.
Delta's aircraft are veritable flying cornucopias. Last year, the carrier landed almost 31,000 flights at Salt Lake City International Airport, and it's safe to say that virtually every aircraft carried something besides baggage in its cargo hold.
At any time, passengers may be sitting atop live lobsters, transplant organs or fresh asparagus. Separated only by the cabin floor, blood samples, Federal Reserve money shipments, family pets and even a corpse may be only a few feet away.
"Delta is the largest mover of human remains in the United States," said Ben Darnell, managing director of Delta Air Logistics.
Air cargo is all about speed, and it's a big business. More than 384 million pounds of freight were loaded and unloaded at the airport last year by commercial and cargo airlines flying into Salt Lake City. The shipments play a vital role. Without them, life in Salt Lake might not be so agreeable.
"It's extremely important, because for us to stay as the best seafood restaurant around, we have to have the best seafood. That entails getting it in here within 48 hours after it's been caught. That's what our edge is," said Scott Loring, executive chef at the Market Street Grill in West Jordan.
A normal Market Street shipment runs from 500 to 600 pounds of fresh fish, live lobsters and shellfish. Most of the catch is flown in refrigerated containers on Delta and Southwest Airlines, arriving several times a day from places such as Maine, Alaska, Hawaii and New Zealand.
"We wouldn't have nearly as many choices on our menu" if Market Street were not able to bring its seafood into Salt Lake City by air. "I don't think we could run half of the fresh fish specials that we are running. And when we do buy local, they are flying it in, too," Loring said.
But air cargo isn't just about fish and flowers. It's also about jobs and health care.
ARUP Laboratories, a medical testing laboratory with 2,000 employees, couldn't survive if it didn't receive 25,000 to 30,000 patient specimens a day.
"We really depend for our continued growth and existence on commercial carriers like Delta and the others. You can transport [body fluids] on the ground, but it takes much longer and you lose the speed. When you've got patients and their physicians waiting for lab test results, it's important that we do those as quick as possible," ARUP President Ronald Weiss said.
Air cargo shipments by weight at the airport peaked in 2004. By the close of last year, shipments had fallen 10 percent.
Experts say a shift by airlines to smaller aircraft, coupled with increased security, high jet fuel prices and a move to truck transport, which has become more competitive, are factors behind the decline.
Before Delta filed for bankruptcy in 2005, the airline operated wide-body jets on many of its domestic routes. To cut expenses and boost passenger revenue, Delta moved many of its big jets to more lucrative international routes and replaced its domestic fleet with smaller aircraft that can't carry as much freight, Delta's Darnell said.
In Salt Lake City, the shift to smaller jets meant that the total pounds Delta flew into and out of the airport fell by 4 million pounds between 2005 and last year, he said.
Although there are not figures broken out for Salt Lake City, the airline pulled in $500 million in revenue from its air cargo operations across its entire route system last year, about 4 percent of total corporate revenue.
Darnell declined to say what 2007 will bring, but the airline is trying to make the number bigger.
"It's a very critical piece of our bottom line. If you look at cargo, many of the things you need are already there because you are already flying passengers. Pilots, the cost of aircraft ownership, landing fees, all those are already there. Being able to put cargo on that craft is very good, from a contribution standpoint," he said.
Jared Ott, operations manager for Salt Lake Air Cargo, said federal rules controlling who is allowed to ship cargo on aircraft are tighter in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At the same time, trucking companies have improved their delivery times. Overnight deliveries between Salt Lake and West Coast cities such as Los Angeles have become common, he said.
Trucks aren't always an alternative to air transport. Hansen likes her flowers delivered as soon as possible, Speedy shipments ensure that the flowers she sells to florists in Utah and Idaho stay fresh longer.
It costs about 15 percent more if her flowers arrive by air. "But everybody wants their flowers to last as long as they can. If the product stays fresher longer, then the consumer is happy," Hansen said.
Riding cargo class
Here are some items that are shipped aboard commercial airplanes into Salt Lake City.
* Fresh flowers
* Live lobsters
* Human remains
* Family pets
* Vegetables
* Human blood
* Human organs for transplant
* U.S. mail
* Money shipments